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“It was under their successors at Oxford School [successors to the Muslims of Spain] that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic Sciences. Neither Roger Bacon nor later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge of Arabic and Arabic Sciences was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge.”
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Robert Briffault,
The Making of Humanity

“The years between Roger Bacon’s birth, in 1220, and Uthred’s death, in 1370, are considered the final flowering of the Middle Ages. They were followed by a longer, grimmer period in Europe, during which the machinery for rooting out heresy defeated enlightened discourse almost completely. The early condemnation of works by William Ockham, Johannes Eckehart, the spiritual Franciscans, and Dante signaled the start of a breakdown in the integrity of Western thought. During this Great Interruption, xenophobia replaced curiosity, interest in Islam and the classics withered, and Muslim thought was anathematized or ignored. Fifty years later, it was no longer wise to learn Arabic, Hebrew, or even Greek.”
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Michael Wolfe,
One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing About the Muslim Pilgrimage

“Grosseteste influenced Roger Bacon's ideas about mathematics and Nature. Bacon wrote hundreds of pages on the subject and, indeed, no historical figure has ever appeared more preoccupied with the question than he. He believed that mathematical knowledge was innate to the human mind and mathematics was a unique form of thought known both by ourselves and by Nature. Its uniqueness is characterized by the fact that it allows complete certainty to be achieved and hence our knowledge of Nature can be secure only in so far as we found it upon mathematical principles.”
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John D. Barrow,
Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation

“The thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon claimed that “nobody can obtain to proficiency in the science of mathematics by the method hitherto known unless he devotes to its study thirty or forty years.” Today, the entire body of mathematics known to Bacon is now acquired by your average high school junior.”
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Joshua Foer,
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

“forever. I would add to my reply as well, the borrowing of a simple invitation from the 13th-century English philosopher Roger Bacon: “Contemplate the world!” Because if we do not store in our heart a profound reverence for the miracles of nature as well as for the accomplishments of men and for their sometimes kind and illustrious way of thinking — even if our life is at its beginning and we have seen nothing yet; or if we’ve seen it all and find man evil — we will not be capable of recognizing those marvels, we will not be”
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Philippe Petit,
Cheating the Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist

“In the thirteenth century, however, a really great scientific man appeared, who may be said to herald the dawn of modern science in Europe. This man was Roger Bacon. He”
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Oliver Lodge,
Pioneers of Science

“Grosseteste’s disciple at Oxford, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, has gained a wider reputation than his master. He held that all natural phenomena are the results of force acting on matter and that force is invariably subject to natural law. He upheld experimentation, believing that results reached “by argument” should be tested in practice. Bacon was a dreamer; he prophesied the coming of mechanical transport on land and water and in the air, and of a world ruled by a technocracy of supermen-scientists. In the meantime, he suggested “crusades of learning” to the Muslim lands to win the Saracens over to Christianity by impressing them with European knowledge. Bacon was a fascinating figure, but modern writers are inclined to downgrade his scientific achievements in comparison with those of Grosseteste.”
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Morris Bishop,
The Middle Ages

“plenty of instances of the persecution of inventors, even to quite a late date. It is impossible, of course, to say how many good things were lost to the world by the pig-headedness which discouraged new inventions. It is marvellous to think what progress single men made, who had to begin almost at the beginning, and learn for themselves what every intelligent boy or girl now finds ready for him in the Cyclopædia. It is very clear that the same beginnings were made again and again by some of the early inventors. Then, what they learned had been almost forgotten. There was no careful record of their experiments, or, if any, it was in one manuscript, and that was not accessible to people trying to follow in their steps. "I have laid out for you," said Uncle Fritz, "some of the early accounts of Friar Bacon,—Roger”
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Edward Everett Hale,
Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends